….Rick Santorum exposed the latter’s naivety when it comes to the goals and motives of al-Qaeda:

On your [Paul’s] Web site on 9/11, you had a blog post that basically blamed the United States for 9/11. On your Web site, yesterday, you said that it was our actions that brought about the actions of 9/11. Now, Congressman Paul, that is irresponsible. The president of the United States — someone who is running for the president of the United States in the Republican Party should not be parroting what Osama bin Laden said on 9/11. ….[full transcript here].

After rejecting Santorum’s thesis, Paul made his fatal blunder:

Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda have been explicit — they have been explicit, and they wrote and said that we attacked America because you had bases on our holy land in Saudi Arabia, you do not give Palestinians fair treatment, and you have been bombing — [audience booing] I didn’t say that. I’m trying to get you to understand what the motive was behind the bombing.

This exchange clearly revealed Paul’s lack of knowledge concerning the nature of the enemy. After all, it’s one thing for some Americans to believe that the source of all conflict is the United State’s presence in some countries, it’s quite another — it’s dangerous — for a potential president to think, and speak, this way.

I submit that it is not only dangerous, but beyond foolish and borderline treasonous to be parroting the taking points of the Islamic enemy as the cassus belli as their justification to slaughter over 3,000 innocent American civilians using civilian airliners as missiles. That a presidential candidate uses the Al Qaeda statement of justification for 9-11 as a reason to blame ourselves for the attack and therefore change our foreign policy as a result is beyond forgiveness. Such thinking would demand we apologize to the Imperial Japanese for provoking their bombing of Pearl Harbor because our naval base there threatened their Pacific expansion. Ron Paul would have us apologize to Al Qaeda for provoking them into attacking us because we had troops in a nation he was exiled from at the invitation of the Saudi government.

The article continues:

Ironically, Paul even contradicted himself: minutes earlier, when discussing the need to cut back on the military, he complained that we had a military presence in 130 countries — bringing to mind the question: why haven’t these countries lashed out [against us the way Al Qaeda has then]?

And that’s a crucial point Ron Paul never addresses – that our bases exist at the invitation or welcome of the local governments that host us or by agreements signed as a consequence of conflict to prevent further conflict or threat upon American interests. Mr. Ibrahim goes on:

But what’s worse is Paul’s naivety — that he would actually swallow and regurgitate verbatim the propaganda al-Qaeda has been dishing for years: thus “Osama bin Laden and al-Qaeda have been explicit — they have been explicit, and they wrote and said”; and “I’m trying to get you to understand what the motive was behind the bombing.”

Did it never occur to the congressman that al-Qaeda could be, um, lying? Had he bothered to juxtapose al-Qaeda’s propaganda to the West — which indeed does amount to blaming U.S. foreign policy for their terrorism — with the otherthings “they wrote and said,” he would have learned their ultimate motives.

For example, for all his talk that U.S. “occupation” is the heart of the problem, shortly after the 9/11 strikes, Osama bin Laden wrote to fellow Muslims:

Our talks with the infidel West and our conflict with them ultimately revolve around one issue — one that demands our total support, with power and determination, with one voice — and it is: Does Islam, or does it not, force people by the power of the sword to submit to its authority corporeally if not spiritually? Yes. There are only three choices in Islam: [1] either willing submission [conversion]; [2] or payment of the jizya, through physical, though not spiritual, submission to the authority of Islam; [3] or the sword — for it is not right to let him [an infidel] live. The matter is summed up for every person alive: Either submit, or live under the suzerainty of Islam, or die. (The Al Qaeda Reader, p. 42)

This medieval threefold choice, then — conversion, subjugation, or the sword — is the ultimate source of conflict, not U.S foreign policy (see also “Reciprocal Treatment or Religious Obligation,” which compares al-Qaeda’s messages to the West with its internal messages to Muslims, documenting all the contradictions).

Ron Paul rejects these facts often cited to him and his supporters in favor of his own talking point insistence that the ONLY reason Jihadists wage war is because we “are over there”, or if they are provoked somehow.

Apparently Ron Paul does not believe in the freedom of speech or the press if appeasing Jihadists is a primary factor in determining America’s foreign policy. After all, if a Danish cartoon can incite a Jihadist attack, then Ron Paul’s “Do not provoke them” approach to foreign policy means our own Constitutionally-protected rights are subservient to those of Islam. It’s a sickeningly silly and appeasement position repeated like a parrot, over and over again, as if he keeps repeating it – it will be accepted as the truth. A cursory study of Jihadist Islam and what motivates the global movement for a Caliphate negates Ron Paul’s willful ignorance of this enemy and it’s another indictment about why Ron Paul should never be president. He should go back to the Libertarian Party where pacifist theory belongs.

Well at least Ron Paul is consistent – consistently ignorant…
When he is hopelessly ignorant, clueless, wrong and idiotic about foreign policy – he is consistent. He consistently proves he is dangerously naive about the nature of Jihadist Islam, and consistently blames America for provoking 9-11.

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